In the eastern sky abode only the pale gold reflection of the city's lights. To the westward, across the Common, the soft blackness under the stars descended even to the treetops. But the attention of Smith and Helen, gazing north on Tremont Street, was fixed on the unsteady glow of threatening, reddish light thrown up against the absorbing fabric of the air. "Good heavens! Just look at that!" Smith said, pointing. "It must be a very bad fire--don't you think so?" inquired the girl. "It looks from here like a corker. It's certainly bad enough to make it well worth seeing," he returned. "Do you want to telephone your mother that you're going?" "Are we going, then?" asked Helen. "To the fire?" demanded her companion. "Of course we are going. Fires are my business, besides being the greatest spectacles in the world. Let's go over to the Aquitaine, and we'll telephone." A few minutes later they came out again; Smith motioned to the driver of a taxi. "Get in," he said to Helen. "You shall ride to the fire like a lady, in a cab." As he spoke he noted how the wind was blowing the girl's hair about her face, and for just an instant he gave that vision its individual due. "Take us as near the fire as you can get," he directed the chauffeur. From Boylston Street up Tremont to its intersection with Beacon is a ride of barely two minutes. It seemed as though almost no time had elapsed before the taxi came to a stop beside the Palmer House. The two occupants descended; Smith paid the man; the vehicle slid off into space beyond their ken. And at that very moment their eyes sprang to where, barely a block away, great tongues of red fire licked above a wide building's roof--and all else but that thing faded into nothing. "This way," said the New Yorker, tersely. They crossed School Street, continuing up Tremont until they were opposite the old King's Chapel Burial Ground. From this point, over the top of the City Hall, they could see the flames riding high in air above a big five- and seven-story building. "My God! That must be Black's Hotel!" said a voice in the crowd behind them. "Sure, that's what it is," volunteered a policeman who was keeping the fire lines. "Were any lives lost?" Smith asked. "No. Every one got out all right. It didn't start in the hotel. They're very careful, and they have a fine fire drill, anyway. There was plenty of time to warn every one." Out of the north came a crisp wind. Not content with blowing, as it had done before, Helen's hair about her ears, it also whipped her skirts urgently about her. Smith calculated this wind, and shook his head dubiously. "Twenty-five miles an hour, I should think," he said. "Rather bad night for a big fire. I wonder if we can get a little closer."